~Narrated by one who watches from the spaces between heartbeats, who knows that mercy and cruelty are often indistinguishable, who understands that the truest tests are those we never expect to face.~
If you had followed Eris Igniva into those eastern caverns, dear reader, you would have understood why so few returned from the Star-Shard Hunt unchanged.
The tunnels were not merely cold... they were the architect of cold, the place where winter itself was born and nurtured before being released into the world above.
The farther she went, the more the light from the sun bled away into nothing, as if giving way to the true nature of ice. Darkness.
Ice formations twisted through the dim light like frozen lightning, creating passages that seemed designed by something with no concept of human navigation.
